Thursday, March 27, 2008

The Washington Post reports that the Governor of Puerto Rico, Anibal Acevedo Vila, was indicted today (along with a dozen associates from his Popular Democratic Party) on 19 counts of conspiracy, fraud, and tax evasion associated with campaign finance violations. This comes after a two-year investigation by U.S. Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodríguez. The Governor has not been arrested but has been asked to turn himself in. This has implications beyond the island.

Puerto Rico's role in the Democratic contest this year has been discussed before, notably the recent shift in the date and format of its contest to select its 55 pledged delegates (as of March 6th, it will now be a primary on June 1st rather than a caucus on June 8th). As for Puerto Rico's 7 superdelegates, so far 3 support Clinton and 2 support Obama. Governor Vila is (was?) the only Puerto Rican to be a Democratic superdelegate by virtue of his elected position rather than longtime DNC membership. Governor Vila backs Obama.

6 comments:

Is it just my imagination, or does it seem like whenever the spotlight shines brightly on a political party, suddenly all of these scandals and indictments come up?? The last two years it was the Republicans with all of the congressional elections and this year it's the Democrats with the primaries.

I'm not sure there's a pattern here. Neither Spitzer nor Vila have anything much to do with the Democratic nomination, although their resignations will cost Clinton and Obama one superdelegate each. There's still action going on with Ted Stevens (Republican-AK) and the lone House rep from Alask a(Republican-AK). The (Democratic) mayor of Detroit was indicted recently. There is an accounting scandal dogging the Republican National Committee.

The only possible pattern is that 2006 saw Dems become the dominant party with more officeholders in more powerful positions nationwide. Nobody bribes the opposition party.

Part of it is a media that bends over backwards to give equal coverage to scandals. So the dozens of Republicans caught up in the K-street scandals and related cases of bribery are given more or less equal weight as the Democrat from Lousiana with cash in his fridge.

I know LTG is right that there isn't really a pattern here--no vast conspiracy--and I think RbR has it right when he blames the media's confusion of "providing equal time to opposing mouthpieces" with "objective reporting."

But when it comes to Puerto Rico, that little island's political landscape is looking more and more like Louisiana's in the Huey Long era. There could well be dirty politics afoot, but probably they have nothing to do with the Democratic convention and everything to do with money and local power. You know, the usual stuff.